MICHELLE
MALKIN MAKES NO PRETENSE of even-handedness
in Invasion, her detailed indictment of illegal immigration
and its consequences for the United States. But her single-minded
focus on the problem may be appropriate given the historic indifference
of most Americans.

All Americans are descendants of those who came to
our country from other places. If we know our own heritage, we honor
our immigrant ancestors and the hardships they endured. We see our
ancestors in today's immigrants, whether legal or illegal. And that
makes us tolerate the inefficiency and incompetence in immigration-law
enforcement, which allows terrorists, criminals, and torturers free
entry into the U.S.

Malkin enumerates in frightening detail the shortcomings--even
post-September 11--in our border security. She reveals the loopholes
in marriage fraud, asylum, and amnesty that have been exploited
by foreigners coming to the U.S. to terrorize, rob, kill, and hide
from justice in their own countries. She describes a government
bureaucracy charged with immigration-law enforcement but crippled
by indifference, neglect, incompetence, bribery, and corruption.
Our country's alphabet soup of visa laws, comparable in complexity
to the Internal Revenue Code, can be easily exploited.

At the top of Malkin's long list of villains are pandering
politicians who tolerate and defend illegal immigration in the hopes
of gaining the "ethnic" vote, even while creating camouflage
for terrorists and criminals in a culture of counterfeit identification
documents, promises of future amnesties, and orders to government
officials to ignore immigration-law violations. Also on Malkin's
villains' list are big business, the travel industry, the educational
establishment, and immigration lawyers who, even after September
11, lobby successfully to maintain practices that allow immigration-law
abuse and who oppose national security reforms that adversely affect
their profits. And let's not forget judges who order the release
into our population of deportable criminal aliens whose home countries
won't take them back, and a State Department with higher priorities
than negotiating the repatriation of these criminal aliens.

Malkin concludes her book with specific recommendations:
End visa waiver and transit programs that allow millions of foreigners
to enter the U.S. without visas. Require foreigners who wish to
change their immigration status (e.g., from visitor to student)
to apply in their home countries, where U.S. consular officials
can consider local police records and intelligence. Streamline the
deportation process and promptly remove those ordered deported.
Stop issuing tax ID numbers to illegal aliens. Beef up interior
enforcement, crack down on asylum abuses, have zero tolerance for
corruption and duplicity in bureaucracy. Militarize our borders,
airports, and ports of entry.

For Malkin, immigration-law enforcement is an essential
element of national security. Whether or not you agree, and especially
if you're undecided, this book is essential reading.

Jan Ting
is a professor of law at Temple University Beasley School of Law
in Philadelphia and a former assistant commissioner of the U.S.
Immigration and Naturalization Service.